The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (55 page)

“Maybe,” he replied carelessly. “I don’t know what detectives say. I know this one is a cinch. This guy,” he was enjoying Marilyn’s tenseness, “has been a dope all along. We think he’s been supplying bodies to folks who want to collect insurance. He’s been getting his bodies off skid row where there are men nobody is supposed to be interested in.”

“Seems rather farfetched,” Villani said, no suggestion of a smile now. “Wouldn’t the insurance companies become suspicious?”

Kip felt good. He had never been much of a hand at beating around the bush. He was a direct action man and he liked to bull right into the middle of things and keep crowding until his opponent acted without thinking.

“Of course, the insurance companies are suspicious. I helped to make them suspicious. So are the newspapers. Now all we have to do is pick up the boys this man has been working with and make them talk. Once they let their hair down, we will have the man behind it, and fast.”

Villani did not like that. He did not like it a bit. Suddenly, he did not want to be going on a date, and it showed. Villani had no reason to believe he was suspected, but he would want to cover up fast, and his next move would be to rid himself of the two who might talk. That done he would be in the clear.

Villani had come to the same conclusion. He turned to Marilyn. “I had no idea you were so busy. Why don’t we just skip dinner tonight? I’ve a few things that need attention and you could finish your conference with Mr. Morgan.”

“Why…!” Marilyn started to speak but Morgan interrupted.

“That would be a help, although I don’t like to intrude. There are several things we have to discuss.”

“Fine!” Villani was relieved. “I’ll call you, dear.” He turned to Morgan. “I wish you success. I hope you find your men.”

As the door closed behind Villani, Marilyn turned to Morgan. “He couldn’t get away too fast, could he? What is the trouble?”

“No trouble for us. As for Gus and Vinson, I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes. He’s going to kill them, you know. He’ll be headed right for them, right now!”

He finished his drink and got up. “There’s nothing I’d like better than to spend the evening with you, but I have to follow him.”

She caught up her coat. “Then what are we waiting for?”

“Not you,” he protested. “You can’t go.”

“Tom Marcy was my brother,” she said. “If George Villani is all you say he is I want to see for myself.”

He hesitated no longer. “It’s your funeral, I warned you this was no place for you.”

V
ILLANI WAS JUST STARTING HIS CAR
when they reached the street, and Marilyn tugged Morgan back into the shadows by the door. “Come on! My car’s in the driveway!”

As they turned into the street Villani’s car was rounding the corner into the boulevard and traveling fast. Following at a distance, they saw Villani turn off the boulevard and head for his own place.

“If he goes out, we’ll take both cars,” Morgan suggested. “I’ll follow him, you follow me. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

They sat in darkness waiting for Villani to emerge. Both were tense. Before this night was over there could be serious trouble, for Villani was not a man who was willing to lose. He had too much at stake.

Gus was dangerous, and so was Vinson, in his own way, and he had no business allowing Marilyn to come although he doubted if he could have stopped her and had not wasted breath trying.

Villani left his house on the run and jumped into his car. He did a fast U-turn in the middle of the street, and his headlights sprayed across their car. Kip, seeing what was to come, had ducked down in the seat pulling Marilyn down with him so they could not be seen.

When the lights were gone, Kip sprinted for the car he had abandoned the night before. He moved out from the curb and rounded the corner on two wheels. After half a mile Kip fell behind another car, switched his lights to dim and put on another hat. Gus knew all about his hats but it was unlikely he’d had the chance or thought to mention it to Villani. Behind him, Marilyn moved smoothly through traffic.

Villani seemed to glance back once but gave no indication that he knew he was being followed. He headed over the pass toward the San Fernando Valley and Kip tailed him at a safe distance.

At a filling station near a motel where there were booths, Kip swung to the curb. He ran back and handed a business card to Marilyn. “Take this number and call Stoska. Tell him what has happened and that we’re headed for an abandoned mine in this vicinity—” he drew a quick circle on the map and handed it to her, “and ask him to get hold of the sheriff and get him out there!”

Marilyn slid from the seat and even as she took her first step away, Kip was gone, traveling fast after Villani. He overtook him as he was swinging off into the hills, and followed, his lights on bright again. After a short distance he turned into a side road that led to some houses, switched to his dimmers again, and backed out, following again. He turned again, then followed without lights.

Gus and Vinson must still be at the mine, or Villani was expecting them soon. When the car ahead turned off on the mine road Kip followed but a little farther, then turned off on some hard-packed sand among the cacti and parked. From a hidden panel under the dash he took a .45 caliber Colt automatic and followed up the hill. His car was now hidden and to get out, Villani would have to come this way.

All was still at the old mine. The car stood in the open space near the gallows frame, but the delivery truck was nowhere in sight. There was a light in the shack.

Kip Morgan moved into the darkness of the hoist house and waited. Without doubt, Gus and Vinson would be there. Villani had made his rendezvous at a place where their bodies were not likely to be discovered. He could shoot first and fast, then drop the bodies down the old shaft and drive away. The scheme had every chance of succeeding.

What little Kip knew would not constitute evidence tying Villani to the crimes. Unless more evidence could be discovered or Gus and Vinson talked, Villani would go free or not even be accused.

He heard an approaching motor for several minutes before it arrived. It was the truck.

Vinson and Gus got out. They whispered together for a minute or two, then walked to the shack and went in. Kip moved away from the hoist house and to the wall of the shack. Voices sounded and he pressed his ear to a crack.

“I don’t know,” Vinson was saying, sullenly, “so don’t blame me. “He’s a hard guy to hold.”

Kip found a crack and peered in. Vinson was seated at the table and Villani was pacing. On the shelf behind Vinson lay a piece of drill steel. Vinson’s eyes were on his hands. “Gus was there, too!” he protested. “Don’t blame me!”

But where was Gus now?

Villani stopped pacing, and his hand reached for the drill steel. He lifted it clear off the shelf and—

Gravel crunched at the corner of the house, and Morgan turned sharply. A gun flamed not a dozen feet away, and only his sudden movement saved him. Instantly, he fired in return. Gus caught himself in midstride and fired again. That bullet thudded into the wall, and Kip fired a second and third time and Gus went down on the gravel.

Flattening against the wall, Morgan peered through the crack. There was no sign of Villani inside the shack, but the door stood slightly open. Vinson was surely dead for no man could survive a skull crushed as was his.

Villani had sent Gus out while he got rid of Vinson, planning to finish Gus later or when he returned. The shots would have warned him that Gus had found something or somebody. Now Villani would know he had at least one man to kill, possibly two.

The slightest move might bring a shot. Kip moved despite the risk, going toward the front of the building, reasoning that Villani would come around the other side as Gus had done. At the front of the house, he took three quick steps to the truck and crouched behind it.

A slow minute dribbled away, then another. Every sense alert, he waited, but there was no nearby sound. Faintly, somewhere far off, he could hear a car. The sound seemed miles away in the clear night air.

“Morgan!” It was Villani. “Is that you out there? Let’s talk business!”

Kip kept very still, waiting. For a few seconds there was no sound, then Villani spoke persuasively. “Morgan, you’re being foolish. A thousand dollars if you just let me drive away! Stay on the case, I don’t care, but you take the money and I get out of here.”

Morgan offered no reply. He could dimly see the area from which the voice came. Only Gus’s body was visible, if Gus was actually dead. He had no way of knowing.

“A thousand dollars is a lot of money. You say the word and I’ll toss it to you.”

“And have you shoot me while I’m in the open? No, thank you!”

Deliberately, he was prolonging the discussion to better locate Villani. Also the sheriff should be on his way.

“I’ll wrap it around a stone and toss it to you. You’re in no danger.”

“You’re talking peanuts,” Kip said. “Marilyn Marcy might not pay that much but the insurance company will.”

There was a brief silence. Was he moving closer? In the vague gray light it was hard to see. There was no moon, only the stars.

“Five thousand might sound better.” Morgan held his mouth close to the car, hoping to give it a muffled sound.

Suddenly they both heard the crunch of feet on gravel, and Kip looked around. He started to yell a warning but she was already within sight. Marilyn Marcy was walking fast and she was unaware of the situation.

“Marilyn!”
Kip yelled.
“Get back! Get back quick!”

“No, you don’t!” Triumph was hoarse in his tone. “Stay right where you are or I’ll kill you!”

Villani was in control, unless—

Kip left the ground in a running dive for the shelter of the building. A gun roared, a hasty shot that missed, and he fired at a dark shadow looming near the corner of the building and heard his shot ring on metal, an old wheelbarrow turned on its side! And then Villani came up from the ground several feet away, and they both fired.

Both should have scored hits but neither did. Kip felt a sharp tug at his sleeve, and then Villani’s descending gun barrel knocked his Colt from his hand. As the gun fell he knotted his fist, whipping it forward and up and Villani took it with a grunt, then threw a short hook to the neck, purposely keeping the blow low to avoid hurting his tender fist. The blow staggered Villani, and Kip followed through with his elbow, over, then back, slamming Villani against the building. His gun roared into the ground, the bullet kicking gravel over Kip’s shoes. Another blow to the midsection and Villani dropped his gun, reached to grab it off the ground and met Kip’s knee in the face. Villani staggered forward and Kip rabbit-punched him behind the neck and the bigger man fell.

Kip scooped both guns off the ground, the fallen man gasping for breath.

Marilyn ran to him. “Kip? Are you hurt? Are you all right?”

“Did you get word to them?”

“They’re coming now. I can hear the cars.” She came closer. “They told me to wait but I thought I might help.”

He looked at her, exasperated, then shrugged.

Villani started to get up.

“Stay where you are,” Morgan advised.

“That offer stands.” Villani’s words were muffled by battered lips. “I’ve got twenty thousand here. I’ll give you half to let me go.”

“What became of Tom Marcy?”

“Suppose you find out? You’ve nothing on me!”

Two cars were pulling into the yard. “No? You killed Vinson. Your fingerprints will be on that drill steel.”

Stoska, Mooney, and a half dozen other men came from the cars, pulling Villani to his feet. During the hurried explanations Marilyn stood beside Kip.

He was beginning to feel it now, sore in every muscle, his swollen fists hurting from the fighting and all the tension of the past few days.

“We checked that burned body again,” Stoska said, “and there were discrepancies, although they were few. Now we’re going to check several other doubtful cases.”

Mooney came over to Marilyn. “We found your brother. It was Morgan’s tip that started us looking. I’m afraid…well…”

“He’s dead?”

“No, he’s not dead, but he’s in bad shape. He must have had a run-in with Gus. He took a bad beating and he’s in a hospital. They found him last night when a couple of wino friends of his came to the police. They found him and were taking care of him, but they thought he’d just gotten drunk and fallen. When he didn’t regain consciousness they got worried and came to us.”

“He’s all right? Is he conscious?”

“He’s conscious, but I won’t lie to you. He’s in bad shape.” Mooney glanced at Kip. “He spotted you. He had been staying away from his old hideouts, tailing Villani and his boys. He saw you in some grease joint across from the warehouse. He almost spoke to you.”

“I wish he had.” Kip took Marilyn’s arm. “It would have saved a lot of trouble.”

When they walked almost to the car he commented, “That’s why his eyes looked familiar. They were like your eyes. He was sitting there all the time and must have heard me asking questions of the waitress. He couldn’t have known why I was interested. Let’s go see him.”

“Tomorrow. He will be asleep now and sleep will do him more good than anything else. In the meantime you need to get cleaned up, rest a little and have a drink.”

“Well,” he agreed, “if you twisted my arm.”

“Consider it twisted,” she said.

Stay Out of My Nightmare

W
hen I walked in, Bill was washing a glass. “There’s a guy looking for you. A fellow about twenty-five or so. He said to tell you it was Bradley.”

“What did he want? Did he say?”

My eyes swept the bar to see if any of my friends were around. None of them was, but about four or five stools away sat a fellow with slicked-back hair and a pasty face.

“He wanted to see you. It seemed pretty serious.”

Bill brought a bourbon and soda, and I thought it over. Sam Bradley had been a corporal in my platoon overseas, but we had not seen each other since our return. We had talked over the phone but had never gotten together. I knew that if he wanted me badly, there was something definitely wrong.

A nice guy, Sam was. A good, reliable man and one of the most decent fellows I’d ever met. “I’ll look him up,” I said. “He’s a right guy, and maybe he’s in trouble.”

“You never can tell.” The man with the sickly face intervened. “Right guys can turn wrong. I wouldn’t trust my best friend.”

The interruption irritated me. “You know your friends better than I do,” I told him.

He looked around, and there was nothing nice about his expression. Looking directly into his eyes made me change my mind about him. This was no casual bar rat with a couple of drinks under his belt and wanting to work off a grouch. This guy was poison.

That look I’d seen before, and the man who had it was usually a killer. It was the look of a man who understands only brutality and cruelty. “That sounded like an invitation,” he said.

“Take it any way you like. I didn’t ask you into this conversation.”

“You’re a big guy.” He watched me like a snake watching a bird. “And I don’t like big guys. They always think they’ve got an edge. Maybe I should bring you down to my size.”

He was getting under my skin. I had no idea of anything like trouble when I walked into the Plaza. Now Sam Bradley was on my mind, and I’d no idea of messing around with such a specimen as this. “Your size?” I said. “Nothing is that small.”

When he came off that stool, I knew he meant business. Some mean bluff. This torpedo wasn’t bluffing. He was going to kill me. He was only a step away when I saw the shiv. He was holding it low down in his right hand, and nobody in the bar could see it but me. He might be a man drunk or all coked up, but he was still smart.

“Put the shiv away, chum.” I had not moved from my stool. “You come at me with that and they’ll be putting you on ice before dark.”

He never said a word, but just looked at me from those flat, ugly eyes. Bill heard me speak of the knife and came down the bar, always ready to stop anything that meant trouble and to stop it before it started.

“Don’t do it, pal,” I said. “They’ve got a new carpet on the deck. I don’t want to smear it with you.”

He came so fast he nearly got me. Nearly, but not quite. His right foot was forward, and when that knife licked out, I chopped his wrist to deflect the blade. My hand closed on his wrist, jerking him toward me, off balance. Then I shoved back quick and at the same time caught him behind the knee with my toe.

He went down hard, the knife flying from his hand as his head thudded against the brass rail. Picking up the knife, I tossed it to Bill. “Put that in your collection.”

Getting off the barstool I walked into the sunlight. Cops might come around, and there was no use straining Mooney’s friendship further. Grabbing a cab, I headed for Bradley’s place.

It was a flat off Wilshire and a nice place. When I pressed the bell, nothing happened. Ellen must be shopping. Bradley was probably at work. I tried the bell again for luck; I was turning away when I saw the edge of a business card sticking out from beneath the door. It was none of my business, but I stooped and pulled it out. It read, Edward Pollard, Attorney-at-Law.

Under it in a crabbed, tight-fisted script were the words:

WAS HERE AT EIGHT AS SUGGESTED
.
IF YOU RETURN BEFORE
10
P.M
.
MEET ME AT MERRANO’S
.
DON’T DO ANYTHING OR TALK TO ANYONE UNTIL I SEE YOU
.

Pollard was a shyster who handled bail bonds and a few criminal cases. We had never met, however. I knew Merrano’s, a sort of would-be night club on a side street, a small club but well appointed and catering to a clientele on the fringe of the underworld.

What impressed me about the card was that neither Sam nor his wife had been home since the previous night. Where, then, was Sam? And what had become of Ellen?

Reaching the walk, I thrust the card into my coat pocket.

At that moment, a car wheeled to the curb, and a man spilled out in a run. Brushing by me without a glance, he went to Bradley’s door. He did not ring the bell or knock, but stooped quickly and began looking for something on the step or under the door. Not finding it, he got to his feet and tried the door. Only then did he ring the bell. Even as he did so, he was turning away as if he were sure it would not be answered.

He gave me a quick glance as he saw me watching him, then went on by. “Hello, Pollard,” I said.

He stopped as if struck and turned sharply. His quick eyes went over me. “Who are you? I never saw you before.”

His voice was quick and nervous, and I was talking to a very worried man.

“I was just wondering why a man would try a door before ringing the bell.”

“It’s none of your business!” he said testily. “It strikes me you’ve little to do, standing around and prying into other people’s affairs.”

He did not walk away, however. He was waiting to see what my angle was. So far, he had not decided what I meant to him or what to do about it.

For that matter, neither had I. Actually, I’d no business bothering him. Sam and Ellen might be visiting. There was no sense in building elaborate plots from nothing, yet the fact that Sam had come looking for me and that I had found the card of a man like Pollard under his door was disturbing.

Two facts had been evident. Pollard had not expected Sam to be home, and he had wanted to pick up his card. That might imply he knew where Sam was or what kind of trouble he was in. Why go to all this trouble to pick up a business card unless something was wrong?

“Look, pal,” I said, “suppose you tell me what’s going on. Come on, give!”

“None of your business!” he snapped, and was getting into the car before I spoke.

“Sam Bradley is a friend of mine. I hope nothing has happened to him or will happen. If anything has happened, I am going to the police. Then I shall start asking questions myself, and buddy, I’ll get answers!”

He rolled down the window and leaned as if to speak, then started off with a jerk.

Standing in the street, I thought it over. I had nothing to go on but suspicions, and those without much foundation. Telling myself I was a fool and that Sam would not appreciate it, I went back to the door. The lock was no trick for me, and in something over a minute, I was inside.

The apartment was empty. Hoping Sam would forgive me, I made a hurried check. The beds were unslept in, the garbage unemptied, yet there were no dirty dishes.

Looking through the top drawer of the bureau, I found something. It was a stack of neatly pressed handkerchiefs, but some had been laid aside and something taken from between them. There was a small spot of oil and the imprint of something that had been lying there for some time. That something might have been a .45 army Colt.

My thoughts were interrupted by the rattling of a key in the door. Hurriedly closing the door, I reached the bedroom door just in time to see the door close behind a girl.

Her eyes caught me at the same instant. She started and dropped her handbag. She was uncommonly pretty, and that contributed to my surprise, for I had seen Ellen Bradley’s picture, and this was not she.

My eyes followed as she moved to pick up her dropped bag, and then I looked up into the muzzle of a .32 automatic. “Who are you?” she demanded. “And what are you doing here?”

It had been a neat trick, as smooth a piece of deceptive action as I’d ever seen. Her bag had been dropped purposely to distract my attention. There was nothing deceiving about that gun. It was steady, and it was ugly. Whoever she was, she was obviously experienced and had a quick, agile brain. “Who are you?” she repeated.

“Let’s say that I am an old army friend of Sam Bradley’s.”

Her eyes hardened. “Oh? So you admit you’re one of them?” Before I could reply, she said, “I’ll just call the police.”

“It might be the best idea. But Sam left word he wanted to see me, and if you’re a friend of his, we should compare notes. When he said he was in trouble, I hurried right over.”

“I’ll bet you did! Now back against the wall. I am going to use the telephone, and if you have any doubts whether I’ll use this gun, just start something.”

I had no doubts.

She took the receiver from the cradle and dialed a number. I watched the spots she dialed and filed it away for future reference. From where I stood, I heard a voice speak but could distinguish no words.

“Yes, Harry, I’m at Sam’s…no sign of him, but there’s somebody else here.” She listened, and I could hear someone talking rapidly. She looked me over coolly. “Big fellow, over six feet, I’d say, and broad-shouldered. Gray suit, gray shirt, blue tie. Good-looking but stupid. And,” she added, “he got in without a key.”

She listened a moment. “Hold him? Of course. I’ll not miss, either. I always shoot for the stomach; they don’t like it there.”

“I don’t like it anywhere,” I said.

She replaced the telephone. “You might as well sit down. They won’t be here for ten minutes.” She studied me as if I were some kind of insect. “A friend of Sam’s, is it? I know how friendly you guys are. What are you trying to do? Cut in?”

“Cut in on what?” I asked.

She smiled, not a nice smile. “Subtle as a truck. As if you didn’t know!”

“And who,” I asked, “is Harry?”

“He’s a friend of mine, and from what he said over the phone, I think he knows you. And he doesn’t like you.”

“I’m worried. That really troubles me. Now give. What’s this all about? Where’s Sam? Where’s Ellen? What’s happened to them?”

“Don’t play games, mister.”

Her tone was bitter, and it puzzled me. Not to say that I wasn’t puzzled about the whole action. Sam Bradley was in plenty of trouble, without a doubt, but what sort of trouble?

Although something in her attitude made me wonder if she was not friendly to Sam and Ellen, she had come in with a key, and she had not called the police. Moreover, she was handling the situation with vastly more assurance than the average woman, or man, for that matter. It was an assurance that spoke of familiarity with guns and criminals. Another thing I knew: The number she called had not been that of the police department.

“Look,” I said, “if you’re a friend of Sam’s, we’d better compare notes. When he left here, he took a gun. If Sam has a gun, you can bet he’s desperate, because it isn’t like him.”

At the mention of the gun, her face tightened. “A gun? How do you know?”

I explained. “Now tell me,” I finished by asking, “what is this all about?”

Before she could reply, hurried footsteps sounded on the walk, and she stepped back to the door. She opened it, but in the moment before she did, her eyes showed uncertainty, even fear.

Three men stepped into the room, and when I saw them, every fiber turned cold. There wasn’t a cop in the country who wouldn’t love to get his hands on George Homan. He was the first man through the door, and when I saw him, I lost the last bit of hope that this girl might be friendly. No girl who knew Homan could be a friend to any decent man. Homan was a brutal killer, utterly cold-blooded, utterly vicious.

The second man was tall, with a wiry body and broad shoulders, his features sharp, his eyebrows a straight black bar above his eyes. Then I saw the last man through the door, and he was my friend from the bar, the one who tried to knife me. Now I knew why he wanted my scalp. It was because he had heard me say I was going to find out what Sam’s trouble was.

“This is the man, Harry,” the girl was saying. “He claims he’s a friend of Sam’s.”

Harry walked over to me, his bright, rodentlike eyes on mine, the hatred in them sharpened by triumph.

“Nice company you keep.” I looked past him at the girl. “Did he ever show you the frogsticker he carries? Now I know where you stand, honey. No friend of Sam’s would know this kind of rat!”

“Shut your face!” Harry snarled, his mouth twisting. As he spoke, he swung.

It was the wrong thing to do, for gun or no gun, I was in no mood to get hit. For a second, Harry had stepped between me and the gun, but as he stepped in, throwing his right, I dropped my left palm to his shoulder, stopping the punch; then I threw an uppercut from the hip into his belly that had the works on it.

His mouth fell open, and his face turned green as he gasped for air.

Before he could fall, I closed with him, shoving him hard at Homan. The third man I did not know, but George was no bargain, and I wanted him out of the play. I went for my gun fast. Hatchet face yanked his, too, but neither of us fired. We stood there, staring at each other. It was a Mexican standoff. If either fired at that range, both would die.

The girl’s gun had dropped to her side. She seemed petrified, staring at me as if a light had flashed in her eyes.

Homan had backed away from Harry, who was groaning on the floor. Hate was in Homan’s eyes. “Kill him, Pete! Kill him!”

“Sure”—I was cool now—“if he kills me, we ride the same slide to hell. Shoot and I’ll take you all with me. I’m a big guy, and if you don’t place them right, it’s going to take a lot of lead, and until I fold, I’m going to be shooting.”

Harry was on the floor, living up to expectations. He was being disgustingly sick. Homan stepped distastefully away from him. “I’m surprised, George.” I was keeping an eye on Pete. “Playing games with a hop head. You know they’re unreliable, and you’re a big boy now.”

“Who is this guy, George?” Pete’s eyes were on me. “He’s not fuzz.”